1215 
S82. 




TO MEXICO 



BY 



PALACE CAR 

INTENDED AS 

A GUIDE 

To Her Principal Cities and Capital, and Gen- 
erally as a Tourist's Introduction 
to Her Life and People. 

y 

By JAMES W. STEELE, 

Author of " Cuban Sketches, " "Frontier Army Sketches," 
Etc., Etc., Etc. 



CHICAGO: 

Rand, McNally & Company. 

1886. 

3. A 





Copyright, 


By 


VV. F. WHITE 




A. D. 1886. 

f 12*5 




CONTENTS. 



Preface J » 7 

CHAPTER I. 
Preliminary . 11 



CHAPTER II. 
Mexican Scenes and Characteristics ... 17 



CHAPTER III. 
Going There 32 

CHAPTER IV. 
Through Mexico 47 

CHAPTER V. 
The City of Mexico 72 

CHAPTER VI. 
The Valley of Mexico 84 



PREFACE. 



MEXICO, save to the very few, has until 
very recently been an almost unknown 
country. Among the latest and most surpris- 
ing achievements of American energy must be 
counted the construction and final opening of 
the Mexican Central Railway, forming a con- 
tinuous line through the heart of the country 
from Paso del Norte to the Capital. The 
republic is now open for the entrance of 
whomsoever will, and her chiefest cities are 
connected by a continuous line with the entire 
railway system of the United States. 

It is unquestionably the greatest event, 
save one, in the stormy and sombre history 
of our sister State, and to Americans them- 
selves is of only secondary importance. 

7 



8 PREFACE. 

Fenced by impassable barriers for some three- 
hundred years, this old, rich, quaint and iso- 
lated empire has suddenly become the coming 
country of the capitalist and the tourist; a 
land in which, by the invitation of its people, 
we have already begun an endless series of 
beneficent and bloodless conquests. 

The Mexican Central would be almost val- 
ueless alone. Other gigantic enterprises on 
our own soil preceded it and made it possi- 
ble. Energy, money, and foresight are the 
prophets of a practical age, and the long 
lines of steel that were laid across plain and 
mountain, through uninhabited silences, and 
amid danger, hardship, and Indian hostility; 
which had their beginnings in the populous 
towns of the Missouri Valley, and an un- 
known ending in the far Southwest, have now 
demonstrated some striking reasons for their 
being. Among these, undoubtedly, is that 
which is continuous with the Mexican Central 
from its northern end, the Atchison, Topeka 
and Santa Fe, itself among the longest lines 



PREFACE. 9 

of railway in one direction ever built, or that 
will ever be built, on the American continent. 
The northern side of Mexico is her nearest 
side in all senses. Her most valuable neigh- 
bor is our own country. Differing from her 
in everything but form of government, inter- 
nally strong, enterprising, advanced in ideas 
and education, wealthy and adventurous, we 
are yet akin to her in national sympathy, 
allied to her by strong commercial interest, 
and intensely interested in her advancement. 
We are, in sober truth, the only neighbor 
from whom she has aught to hope. To us, 
Mexico is the coming country, if there be any. 
She is accessible, as she has never been be- 
fore, hopeful, expectant, cordial with a sin- 
cerity the wisest had scarcely hoped for in 
this century, and seemingly fearless of the 
magnified and unreal dangers of political 
alliance, and abandoning all the ancient an- 
tagonisms of race and custom, asking for no 
passports and making no enquiries, she in- 
vites every comer from the land of her ideals 



IO PREFACE. 

and hopes, to the palms and pyramids, the 
gray towers and tropical gardens, of a capi- 
tal that may be as old as Thebes, is as quaint 
as Tangiers, as foreign as old Spain, and as 
new as the newest American territory to all 
modern things. 

It is, finally, but fair to recall the well 
known fact that a brief characterization of a 
people is a difficult task. What is here set 
down is but the condensation of hundreds of 
impressions, but they are stated de buena Fe\ 
and after having eaten salt with nearly all 
classes of a heterogeneous population, who 
were, however, while the brief association 
lasted, all Mexicans and Americans, all cour- 
teous, and, I am in duty bound to add, among 
the most agreeable of good fellows. 



TO MEXICO. 



CHAPTER I. 
PRELIMINARY. 

THE American is reputed the great mod- 
ern adventurer. There is no civilized 
country to which he has not gone or to which 
he does not intend to go. Every year he 
pours himself out upon Europe like the 
swarms of Attila, with his women-folk and 
personal belongings. 

But, as yet, he has not extensively visited 
Mexico, though probably the most interesting 
of all regions, and to be seen with the least 
inconvenience. 

The country has heretofore presented many 
obstacles to even the adventurous American 
mind. With his usual astuteness, he has dis- 



12 TO MEXICO. 

missed the subject with the quick conclusion 
that it would not "pay." It was the land of 
countless revolutions and political uncertain- 
ties. It was colored with memories of San 
Jacinto, The Alamo, Buena Vista, and the 
exploits of General Santa Anna. All Mexi- 
cans, judging from the few specimens seen by 
us, were innocently but very erroneously 
deemed to belong to the variety called "greas- 
ers." We all recall certain sentences from the 
speeches of Thomas Benton, and certain half- 
forgotten narratives of the surviving veterans 
of that unnecessary series of brilliant skir- 
mishes called by us the Mexican war. And, 
until very lately, the country could boast of 
but one railway, — from Vera Cruz to the Cap- 
ital, — and that single evidence of internal 
enterprise necessitated a sea voyage to the 
fever-haunted port which has no harbor, and 
has long been distinguished for clumsy light- 
erage, " northers," and watery accidents. The 
country has been fenced in by rocky barriers, 
mountain chains, and immense distances more 



PRELIMINARY. 1 3 

impassable than any sea ; by lack of informa- 
tion concerning it, and by all the differences 
of race, language and custom. 

This has been so far changed that the 
requisites now of a most delightful journey 
are merely a through ticket and return, and 
a sleeping-car berth. The time required is 
about the same as that stated from any given 
eastern point to San Francisco, possibly a few 
hours less. 

In people, climate, scenery, and a strange- 
ness that is astonishing as pertaining to the 
North American domain, the country un- 
doubtedly repays a visit. It is not going to a 
"resort," and in no reasonable sense can a 
journey thither be called a visit. It is not a 
locality, but a country. Winter and summer 
the climate remains nearly the same, a region 
of tropical latitude, but immense elevations. 
There are senses in which Florida, the West 
Indies, the Bermudas, offer no comparisons. 
Saying nothing of the Capital, there are cities 
in Mexico whose very names are unknown to 



14 TO MEXICO. 

Americans, hitherto fenced in by the barriers 
of nature, only now accessible even to the 
majority of Mexicans by rail, containing from 
forty thousand to ninety thousand inhabitants, 
where palm trees grow in the plaza, tropical 
fruits are the usual products of every month 
in the year, and yet where blankets are com- 
fortable every night. All the delicacies of the 
garden, and every product of the field, grow 
almost side by side with cotton, cane, limes, 
bananas, and a hundred differing fruits, whose 
very names are unknown to the majority of 
mankind. Yet there are no tropical diseases, 
and none other than those common to hu- 
manity everywhere, while a light overcoat is 
desirable every evening. 

Mexico is preeminently the land of moun- 
tains. Near and frowning, or blue and ethe- 
real with the haze of distance, they are every- 
where before the eye, until the senses become 
accustomed to grandeur, and tired of inac- 
cessible majesty. Ragged sierras, towers, 
castles, cones, seamed and scarred veterans of 



PRELIMINARY. 1 5 

the age of fire, fence the horizon in. Among 
them lie valleys where the vertical sun shines 
scarce half the day, where villages nestle and 
mysterious waters flow, and where the only 
aspiring thing is the tower of the inevitable 
church, shapely and beautiful even in the 
most squalid village. 

Notwithstanding, the changes are almost 
infinite. You may go from the Capital, which 
to all Americans, as to all Mexicans, is the 
centre of a system, by rail to Cuautilla or 
Yantepec, or to Amecameca, at the foot of his 
serene and smoky majesty, Popocatapetl. If 
you are adventurous you may even climb that 
elevation of some nineteen thousand feet, and 
for once in all your life, standing amid eternal 
snows, you may look down into the fervid 
heart of our common mother. 

But everywhere you will encounter a 
quaint, primitive, slow and picturesque peo- 
ple. The Mexican at home stands as the sixth 
race; unlike all others in appearance, gait, 
language, and probably blood itself. Street 



16 TO MEXICO. 

and village scenes afford the stranger a pan- 
oramic amusement which does not fail him 
in weeks of association. Customs, industries, 
habits, mechanical operations, with industrial 
contrivances unknown to all the world beside, 
are everywhere. You may surprise your inner 
man with strange beverages, and accustom 
your palate to dishes hitherto not included 
among your necessaries of life. You may 
witness the decaying exploits of the bull-ring, 
the excitement of the cock-pit, or hear the 
strains of Italian opera. But everywhere and 
always, you are wrapped in a climatic brill- 
iance that never fades, save when it gives 
place to the flashes of stars that seem nearer 
and brighter than ours. It is the perpetual 
glow of a land where winter never comes, and 
whose people, time immemorial, worshipped 
the sun. 



CHAPTER II. 
MEXICAN SCENES AND CHARACTERISTICS. 

FOUR-FIFTHS of the people of Mexico 
are Indians; that is to say, pure Aztecs, 
totally unlike the " noble Red Man " of our 
latitudes. The remainder are of mixed de- 
scent, and, in a few cases, Castilians. The 
common and natural idea is, that being a 
Spanish conquest, Mexico, like Cuba, should 
have few or no Aborigines left, and that Mex- 
icans are the descendants of the conquerors 
and of Spanish blood. 

But the Indian blood is not the cause of 
any social or other distinction, save that it is 
considered, if anything, somewhat better than 
the Spanish. Benito Juarez, the most la- 
mented of their presidents, was an unmixed 
Aztec. Porfirio Diaz, the strongest Mexican 
of his times, and in many respects the Gen- 



18 TO MEXICO. 

eral Grant of his country, is of mixed blood. 
Everywhere the Aztec face, unmistakable in 
its pathetic features, goes with the best and 
worst types of Mexican character. Spain, 
her glory, her tyranny and her dominion, have 
seemingly left but the faintest marks upon 
Mexican personal characteristics. Religion, 
somewhat modified, language, and the Moor- 
ish architecture, are her bequests to Mexico, 
and are apparently all that is left to mark the 
brilliant conquest of Cortez. 

Of the whole number, a larger proportion 
of the population than of any country except 
Italy, seem to be very poor. This has grown 
to be largely personal habit, but is also due 
to the stress of circumstances in a country so 
isolated that she has lived over and over 
again within herself, producing what she 
could consume, and no more. There are 
other causes, destined to be discussed in all 
their fulness very soon, one of which un- 
doubtedly is a system of laws which permits 
the holding of vast bodies of land by one 




COUNTRY BRIDE. 
19 



20 TO MEXICO. 

individual or family, exempt from taxation. 
There has been for some sixty years, and un- 
til within a limited time, an almost continu- 
ous internecine dissatisfaction, sometimes 
accentuated by an uprising first in one dis- 
tant community and then in another. Affairs 
in this respect have greatly changed. Troops 
may now be very quickly sent to districts 
which they would not formerly reach in a 
year, if at all. Nobody seems to have any 
great apprehensions. There is now great in- 
terest in outside affairs, and a general desire 
to imitate all that is good in our own repub- 
lic. The railways have immensely stimulated 
the desire to make, to sell; to ship, to travel, 
to see with the natural eye the country that 
has shown sufficient confidence in forsaken 
Mexico to expend her millions there. The 
conversation of the intelligent Mexican on 
these subjects is sometimes almost pathetic. 
Inaction and laziness, at least, are not, as has 
been so often imagined, the cause of finan- 
cial stress on the part of the masses. Every 



MEXICAN SCENES. 21 

Mexican toiler is so from early youth. Boys 
are stone cutters and burden bearers from 
twelve years. The peasant's gait is quick 
and all his movements active. He is a noto- 
riously fast walker. Slight in figure and 
thick set, he will, and often does, carry a bur- 
den of three hundred pounds, and go off with 
it at a jog trot that I had always imagined 
the Chinaman held an exclusive patent upon. 
There are no drays. To be a " cargador " 
seems to be an ambition of Mexican peasant 
youth. Three men, and sometimes two, will 
carry a piano a dozen squares. 

In truth the ordinary Mexican seems un- 
daunted by tasks that would be undertaken 
by no other man. A crate of crockery, of 
vegetables, of fruit, of anything, may be dis- 
cerned jogging rapidly up some steep road, 
so huge that the bearer is quite invisible, and 
he has tirelessly borne it across mountain and 
valley in a country where leagues are noto- 
riously long. Long trains of donkeys wind 
through the country, laden with sugar, cot- 



22 TO MEXICO. 

ton, wool, hides, wood, stone, and a single 
native plods behind the train. He has come 
perhaps a hundred miles, and eaten for a day 
what would not furnish the average American 
a single meal. Loafing, except of the abso- 
lute variety, and systematically in the sun, is 
quite unknown. Frugality is not a virtue, 
but a thing of lifelong practice and necessity. 
Every Mexican, of every grade and class, 
is a courteous man. Ask him a question, and 
he invariably gives you the best answer at his 
command. He is generally willing to spend 
time and effort for your accommodation. He 
is never embarrassed. The girl by the roadside 
never blushes and never runs away. Look at 
a Mexican gentleman, and he is wont to smile 
and salute you. Ask him a question on the 
street, and he will shake hands with you at 
parting. People whom you never saw before, 
and will in all probability never see again, 
will willingly show you through museums 
and libraries, give you their time for an hour, 
shake hands and bid you good-by, merely 



MEXICAN SCENES. 23 

because you are a stranger, and during the 
whole time never ask you a personal question. 
The stories with which every new-comer is 
regaled and enlightened upon his arrival, are 
seldom borne out by the experience of three 
weeks. The author has been among some of 
the hardest crowds in the byways of the Cap- 
ital, where the yeasty odor of pulque mingled 
itself with indescribable smells to which the 
two-and-seventy of famed Cologne were as 
roses, and was never molested, threatened, 
touched, or even looked at sidewise. Never- 
theless, every traveller will be duly informed 
of the hatred of all natives for the "gringo" 
and warned that they will steal the ring from 
his finger and the cigars from his pocket. 
There are thieves, and some very ingenious 
and inveterate ones. I would myself, and per- 
haps so would the reader, like to be informed 
where there are not. You may. come as near 
tempting fate in Mexico as in any country. 

Americans are in certain things the most 
inconsiderately impatient of all people. Mex- 



24 TO MEXICO. 

ico is the slowest country on the globe, with 
the exception of Spain, Italy, Portugal, Rus- 
sia, and all South America. There are about 
sixty millions of people on this side of the 
Atlantic who speak the Spanish In all Amer- 
ica the English tongue is in the minority. If 
you go there you will have all the better time 
if you do not try to reform the country. 
Avoid the impatient gesture, the disgusted 
look, and the pushing demeanor which ac- 
complishes nothing. It is the land of manana 
and luego. You must wait more or less; since 
you must, it is as well to do it patiently. 

On the other hand, order, neatness, system, 
regularity, are not studies in Mexico. There 
are no chambermaids, no American brooms, 
no private boarding houses. Male servants 
clean your room and make your bed. You 
pay so much per diem for a room and one 
candle, and are expected to furnish your own 
soap, which is an article of luxury not the 
cheapest. You may eat where you choose, 
regularly, irregularly, or not at all. Living 



MEXICAN SCENES. 25 

in the Capital is not cheap, nor indeed very- 
dear, averaging something like four dollars 
per day, for all necessaries. By rule, break- 
fast comes at 12 m., and dinner at about six. 
There is a cup of coffee in the morning. 
There are many good hotels of their Jdnd, 
the Iturbide being a magnificent building, 
and the San Carlos, in the same square, good 
enough. There are also a large number of 
bad ones, which state of things is not con- 
fined to Mexico entirely. A stranger can tell 
as much by the price as by anything; a good 
room can hardly be got for less than two dol- 
lars per day. In towns like Queretaro, Aguas 
Calientes, or Zacatecas, hotel bills, including 
everything, are about three dollars per day. 

Beds, always for a single person, are good 
and clean, but if one cares for a soft pillow, 
it is well enough to carry a small one in all 
journeys through the country. -In outlying 
towns the idea of what constitutes a hotel is, 
to say the least, unique. In most places the 
chances are the tourist must camp, or wish he 



26 TO MEXICO. 

had done so. The ancient meson exists in 
many places. It is a building into whose open 
court the diligence drives through a castellated 
gateway. Mules, pigs and domestic fowls 
occupy the place together. A water-tank is in 
the centre. Around the sides are the rooms. 
Each has one door, no windows, no beds, no 
furniture of any description. The antique 
wayfarer furnishes everything and carries it 
with him, and rents the room for a single 
night. It reminds one of the scenes in Don 
Quixote. 

There are now too many lines of railway 
to interesting places, for the visitor to be 
under the necessity of often using either dili- 
gence or meson. If it becomes absolutely 
necessary to go to some out-of-the-way place 
where the pilgrim may become a social dis- 
coverer, it is best to hire the universal burro- 
train and Mexican, "camp out," be your own 
purveyor of distances and fare, and, aided by 
the novelty and the kindly climate, have a 
time to be remembered. 



MEXICAN SCENES. 27 

Nearly all of Mexico that the tourist will 
wish to visit has an elevation of from five to 
seven thousand feet, and though far within 
the tropics, may be said to be never oppres- 
sively hot, and never really cold. There is 
never a need of great variety in clothing. One 
may almost wear the same garments for as 
long as they are whole, for all seasons. It is 
best to bring with you the same clothing, 
including underwear, you would use in the 
autumn months in the Northern and Middle 
States. It will be found that it is better too 
heavy than too light, better of solid material 
than of texture particularly fine, better of 
light colors than of black or very dark. There 
are nevertheless days in midsummer when it 
is quite too warm for comfort. The rule may 
be fairly stated thus ; always warm in the sun, 
always cool in the shade, always chilly at 
night-fall. There is no day in the Mexican 
year when light flannel underwear ought not 
to be worn. 

In the matter of gayety, the city of Mexico 



28 TO MEXICO. 

presents a striking contrast to that other 
tropical capital, Havana. She has flowers in- 
numerable all the year; a climate of inde- 
scribable brilliancy, and yet is a sad city. 
Mexican shops close at seven o'clock in the 
evening. The conventional bride's dress is the 
gayest I have ever seen in Mexico. The striking 
colors of the sunlit street arise altogether from 
the sunshine and the universal serape. It is quite 
as well to leave off the usual American custom, 
and come to Mexico with but little baggage. 
If it is desired above all to enjoy oneself and 
see the contrasts of Mexican life, a slight 
equipage makes it all the easier. An ordinary 
business suit is all that is required. Ladies, 
of course, are expected to have more luggage, 
but the railways all charge a rate for baggage 
that is not carried in the hand, and the street- 
dress of northern cities, or a travelling suit, is 
all that is really required. 

It may be at first a matter of surprise that 
the average Mexican seems to know so little 
of his own country, and to have so little local 



MEXICAN SCENES. 29 

pride in its history and interesting antiquities. 
It is not strange to him; he has always been 
there, and has never thought much about it. 
It is not yet a show country. When this 
feature changes, it will, as usual, change too 
much. 

Another strange thing is, that with an 
advancement in art that surprises every 
visitor, the country has no literature. The 
galleries of the Capital are filled with speci- 
mens of the old and new schools, many of 
which would be masterpieces in any country. 
Yet, so far as I have been able to discover, 
there is not a publishing house in the re- 
public, and the three or four book-stores of 
the city are filled w T ith French works, either 
scientific or novels. 

The railways are a new thing, except the 
Vera Cruz line, which was some twenty years 
in building, and, finished, is less than three 
hundred miles in length. As yet the average 
citizen has no adequate appreciation of their 
fateful results to him and his country. While 



30 TO MEXICO. 

intensely interested, and very hopeful, he is 
yet a man who has no thrills, and dreams no 
dreams, who in times past has frequently 
broken out and done something politically 
desperate, but who usually accepts the inevi- 
table with that peculiar fatalism fortunately 
quite unknown to the Saxon. Many of his 
ways are such as will not strike the visitor as 
those that are to be imitated with profit, and 
many of them are admirable instances of the 
adaptation of man to fate. But he is a man 
who is by nature picturesque, even in rags, 
and a Mexican crowd is a brilliant assemblage 
in the white sunshine of the Mexican street, 
without regard to the quality of the decora- 
tions. The tourist comes upon the native 
now, in all his villages and by-ways, in the 
condition in which he has been for two hun- 
dred years. Such an instance of primitive- 
ness is not to be met with elsewhere. He is 
awakening from his siesta; but the quaintness 
of his race and kind will probably never 
entirely leave him. The deep peace which 



MEXICAN SCENES. 3 1 

broods upon all his hills can never entirely 
depart, and the yellow glory will never be 
dimmed. He is the still vigorous descendant of 
a powerful race whose idols he has abandoned 
and whose language and history he has for- 
gotten, but whose ancient dominion he still 
holds; the Mexican, almost the pathetic last 
man. 



CHAPTER III. 
GOING THERE. 

THERE are at least two classes of travel- 
lers into whose hands this little volume 
may chance to fall: first, those whose time is 
not especially limited, and w T ho desire to see 
Mexico for the gratification of the highest 
form of curiosity of which men are capable, 
and for the novelty and change to be found 
in its climate and people. Second, those who 
go there for business purposes, whose release 
from other business is temporary, and who 
desire to pass by all secondary points, " taking 
in" only the most prominent. Yet there is 
one thing unavoidable by anybody, and that 
is the journey thither. It therefore seems 
necessary, in any effort to convey information 
about Mexico, to begin at the beginning. In 
this connection the author begs leave to state 
facts as he believes them to exist, and as they 
32 



GOING THERE. 33 

have occurred in his own experience, regard- 
less of the claims of other routes than the one 
taken by him, any and all of which may have 
their points of just distinction. The all-rail 
route is, as a matter of course, the preferable, 
and the more nearly all-rail a journey is, in the 
immense distances now traversed by thou- 
sands of travellers, the better. The Pullman 
car has been made in late years to attain to 
immense and hitherto impossible distances, 
without delay, accident or repair. Systems 
of baggage-checking that are complete be- 
yond anything known in other countries, 
make the change from one car to another a 
matter of little inconvenience when it does 
rarely occur. Vera Cruz, as a port without 
harbor or landing, and the railway line run- 
ning thence to the City of Mexico, have been in 
existence many years without greatly affect- 
ing the travel to or from the country, and 
without, in any sense, changing that isolation 
which has made Mexico for hundreds of 
years the remotest corner of Christendom. 

3 






34 TO MEXICO. 

The line which, in an almost direct course 
to the southwest, has for its chief est object 
the Mexican Capital, is the Atchison, Topeka 
and Santa Fe. Though not directly, its course 
is general toward El Paso for the whole of 
the immense distance between that point and 
Kansas City, which is its eastern terminus. 
To the latter place it will be necessary to 
come some day, in any event. The town is 
not a beauty. It was, some twenty years ago, 
nothing more than a Westport Landing," on 
the unpicturesque banks of the Missouri. 
From that miserable hamlet it has grown to 
be the most important city of the West — not 
so much in size, though rapidly attaining that, 
but as the depot of a great industry, the re- 
ceiver and distributor of countless thousands 
of cattle and swine, the absorbing nucleus of 
a trade that in a few years will be able to sup- 
ply the world with beef. 

Soon after leaving Kansas City, and becom- 
ing fairly settled in one's section for a journey 
that is more like a voyage than a tour by rail, 




A COMPETITOR OF THE LOCOMOTIVE. 
35 



36 TO MEXICO. 

the enormous distance covered by the Atchi- 
son, Topeka and Santa Fe becomes a matter 
of reflection. It has a strange story. It was 
definitely projected and persistently built 
through a howling wilderness that, as a re- 
sult few men of that day would have been 
bold enough to prophesy, it has made to blos- 
som as the rose. For years it continued its 
westward course, forgotten almost by the 
stockmarket and the newspapers. It extends 
from Kansas City to the port of Guaymas on 
the western coast of Mexico, and to El Paso 
del Norte upon the northern and nearest side 
to us of that republic, where its track is con- 
tinuous with that of the Mexican Central, 
which is, in effect, the extension of its line 
unbroken to the City of Mexico. Its length, 
including its Colorado line, and other 
branches built by it, is about two thousand 
four hundred miles. Its line directly and 
continuously travelled in a journey from the 
eastern terminus at Kansas City to Mexico, 
extends across the farms and orchards of 



GOING THERE. 37 

eastern Kansas, traverses the Arkansas Valley* 
for nearly four hundred miles, crosses the 
southeastern corner of Colorado, traverses the 
entire length of New Mexico from north to 
south, and finally places its passengers across 
the southern boundary of the United States 
and upon foreign soil, and behind a locomo- 
tive whose headlight glares still southward 
across the limitless meadows of Chihuahua. 

It is natural that the ancient, the tradi- 
tional, the moss-grown, should attract the 
interest, and affect the sensibilities of the 
average American. We have not many of 
those things to display, and seek them in Ger- 
many, Italy and the mother country. But we 
have, in compensation, those most wonderful 
pictures of human progress, that are impossi- 

* Some fourteen years ago the Arkansas Valley in Kansas was 
traversed by the writer, principally accompanied by an intelligent 
mule. Through its whole length there was not a soul or sound. 
There was not while this line was building. It was the grass- 
grown " American Desert," — useless, irredeemable. There are 
now living there more than half as many people as the famed, rich 
and beautiful Valley of Mexico contains after a civilized occupation 
of some three centuries. 



38 TO MEXICO. 

ble to any but Americans, and to any century 
but this. Hundreds of us who have been 
everywhere else have never seen it; thousands 
more have no just conception of it. Students 
of history, to whom the epocha of the world 
are as familiar as the alphabet, take no note 
of the times in which ten years make a cen- 
tury, and the days of a single generation 
change all the features of a life that has no 
traditions and no past. A single crossing of 
the vast theatre of these affairs, a single view 
of the widening edges of this human flood, is 
almost enough to change one's conception of 
his relations to his age, and modify his firmest 
views of the capacities of his race. 

In this sense, not regarding views of moun- 
tain scenery, and the wide expanse of plains 
that are like solid seas, and looking only upon 
that spectacle denied to men until this age, — 
the magnificent processes of the erection of 
an empire, — a journey through the West for 
the first time is a wonderful thing, and the 



GOING THERE. 39 

tourist to Mexico may congratulate himself 
upon its being included in his passage. 

The journey upon which the traveller has 
entered is, as stated, as much a voyage as a 
journey, lacking only uncertainties, sea-sick- 
ness, and general unsteadiness. The city of 
Mexico is south of latitude twenty, Kansas 
City is north of thirty-nine. It is a journey 
of near two thousand miles if it lay in a line 
as directly north and south as the course of 
the wild goose. There is not a break in the 
line of about two thousand three hundred 
miles. A section of a Pullman car becomes a 
residence, and the companions of the journey 
are as those who have lived upon the same 
street with you for years. 

It is cold: the storms of the northern win- 
ter have locked the world within those icy 
bars that are the similitude of death. In two 
days you may be beneath a glowing sun, 
whose rays, at an altitude of five to seven 
thousand feet, illuminate a world of blue 
mountains, silent valleys, and distances whose 



40 TO MEXICO. 

immensity is lost in purple haze. It is warm, 
glittering, and gives you the impression of 
changelessness, and that it never rains. You 
are far above the highest mountains of home. 
The top of Mount Washington is something 
you would not note, and might look down 
upon. There are mountains around, and still 
above you, and their tops are scarcely distin- 
guishable from the clouds that sail in the alti- 
tudes of another world. 

In those two days you have had unrolled 
before you some of the most extraordinary 
aspects of American civilization. You have 
passed through those gigantic progresses that 
are more wonderful than the tale of Aladdin's 
lamp. You have seen in new lands and un- 
tried fields a wealth, intelligence, and content 
that in the first half of the century, and the 
last quarter of the eighteenth, would have 
been a marvel if accomplished in fifty years. 
The white walls of school houses ; the roofs, 
and monstrous architecture of elevators ; cit- 
ies, little and ambitious/ or big and indepen- 



GOING THERE. 41 

dent ; streets crowded with the wagons of the 
country folk ; smoke from tall chimneys ; 
hedges, orchards, herds, homes, are upon 
every hand. There is the sound of bells and 
the screaming of whistles, and human crowds 
that are all Americans, with the same lan- 
guage, laws, ambitions and hopes that other 
Americans have, yet are no more like eastern 
people than eastern people are like French. 

You have crossed the Great American 
Desert ; at least if you have not there is none. 
It is so much a desert that it is the great graz- 
ing country of the United States, teeming 
with enormous and growing wealth. It com- 
prises all northwestern Texas, western Kansas, 
southern Colorado, and eastern and southern 
New Mexico. It is dotted here and there 
with immense herds, owned by companies 
whose capital stock runs most frequently into 
the half millions, and who must in a short 
time control the cattle market of the world. 
The line of the Atchison, Topeka and Santa 
Fe seems to cross this immense space from 



42 TO MEXICO. 

northeast to southwest. You may see occa- 
sionally beside the track a little ranche, the 
queer structure known as a "chute," a cowboy 
in his paraphernalia, and on all sides cattle, 
the plain, the hills, the sky and loneliness. 

Then comes New Mexico. It is easily said, 
but it is by no means new. These rambling 
villages were named before the American rev- 
olution, and the capital is the eldest town of 
North America. You have exchanged your 
leagues of plains for the smell of pines, and 
the sharpness of mountain air. Queer vil- 
lages nestle in the valleys, and bronzed and 
weather-beaten faces and an unknown tongue, 
nondescript garments, and an ancient routine 
of life, indicate the oldest civilization under 
the American flag. It is an incongruous mix- 
ture. The Yankee town has grown up beside 
the track, while the rambling adobe one lies 
sleepily behind it. The burro train divides 
the highway with the red-and-green American 
wagon. The Mexican woman, hiding her fea- 
tures in the time-honored rebosa, creeps tim- 



GOING THERE. 4$ 

idly beside the jaunty northern girl along the 
street, presenting the most opposite of femi- 
nine contrasts. The old life is not changed 
and the new life is not hindered. Adobe takes 
upon itself glittering door-knobs, glass win- 
dows, and shingle roofs, while the civilized 
mansion has for its nearest neighbor the pri- 
meval dwelling, whose earthen roof has shel- 
tered successive generations. 

There is too, the unchanged dwelling of the 
Pueblo, that hive of communistic industry 
that seems indifferent to all that comes, per- 
petually changeless. Between the ashen 
stream beside whose banks he has lived a 
thousand years, and the long lines of railway 
track, his village stands, a changeless memen- 
to of a time so old that its years are uncount- 
ed. Through all that time may bring, the 
ancient man seems composed and serene, the 
victim, through hundreds of years, of the 
Apache, the Spaniard, and finally of American 
civilization. 

But it is not a voyage in which there is no 



44 TO MEXICO. 

touch of tierra firma y unless the voyager so de- 
sires. Near at hand are at least two places 
where one may rest for a day, a week or a 
month. One of them is Las Vegas Hot 
Springs,* a charming watering place and 
health resort, the grounds and hotels of which 
are owned by this company, and the other of 
which is the ancient city of Sante Fe. 

The stopping place for Las Vegas Hot 
Springs is the little city of Las Vegas, from 
which there is a train of the same line, con- 
necting closely, and going to and returning 
from the- hotel several times per day. The 
distance is only some six miles, by the valley 
of the little river Gallinas. 

Just below Las Vegas, and immediately be- 
yond the famous Glorieta range, is a station 
called Lamy, after the bishop of Santa Fe. 

* The fine hotel at Las Vegas Hot Springs was burned in August, 
1885. The company is now engaged in the erection of a new one, 
solidly and elegantly constructed of stone and slate. These Springs 
have attained a wide reputation, both for beauty of situation and 
health-restoring properties. The new hotel, The Phcenix, will be 
opened about July 1st, 1886. 



GOING THERE. 45 

From here there is a ride of seventeen miles, 
often said to be one of the finest in America, 
up the mountain and among pifions and 
cedars, to Santa Fe. 

This old and most interesting city is a fore- 
taste of Old Mexico. For near three centuries 
it has been the political and religious capital 
of the picturesque territory which the old 
country did not lose until yesterday, — say 
about 1850. For a few days it is interesting, 
full of adobe palaces and crumbling churches, 
of legends and reminiscences. Tesuque (Ta- 
soo-kee), a village of the Pueblos, lies a few 
miles away, and is well worthy of a visit. 

Long before this the voyager will have left 
the eastward flow of waters, crossed the 
mountain barrier through the tunnel and 
steep incline of Raton pass, and entered the 
valley of the Rio Grande — the Rio Bravo del 
Norte of the Spaniards. To one who visits 
the region for the first time, the scenes are 
quaint, almost comical. Burro trains, adobe 
castles, higgledy-piggledy villages, are every- 



4.6 TO MEXICO. 

where. Sunshine of the yellowest variety 
seems to shine always. It is a world of black 
lava blocks, gaunt cacti, frowning ranges of 
sierras, and profound and unbroken peace. 
There are sometimes running streams that 
seem to have been mysteriously coaxed up 
hill, and gardens whose green luxuriance sur- 
prises the eye. 

After these scenes, occupying more than 
two days of uninterrupted travel, and so 
quickly passed by a train whose incongruous 
noise seems to awake echoes that were forever 
sacred to Aztec gods, the sun sets upon Jorna- 
do del Muerto, for the last time, in this journey, 
under the American flag. In the morning you 
are in El Paso, and before you lies the wide 
domain of Mexico. 



CHAPTER IV. 
THROUGH MEXICO. 

THE ancient and sleepy town of El Paso 
del Norte is the utmost northern point 
of the Republic. It lies, an agglomeration of 
adobe houses embowered in vines and trees, 
on the southern bank of the Rio Bravo del 
Norte, — known to us as the Rio Grande. In 
ancient times the stream may have better de- 
served its designation, and have really been 
the "Mad River of the North." Owing to 
the drainage; of its rolling flood for the uses 
of irrigation, a view of it from the rail- 
way bridge shows the modern traveller only 
glimpses of yellow water lying between bars 
of brown sand. Mexico happens to own only 
about seventy miles of navigable stream, and 
only one shore of that. A little grandilo- 
quence in the matter of naming what she has 
must, therefore, be excused. 

47 



48 TO MEXICO. 

But the Rio Grande is not the only thing 
at El Paso; the other striking feature is con- 
trast. The old town on the southern side lies 
dreaming. The modern one on our side has 
a "boom." Another thing is climate. Situ- 
ated neither far north nor extremely south, 
with an elevation of some five thousand feet 
above sea level, the invalid or semi-invalid 
who is tired will find here that almost perpet- 
ual brilliancy for which these latitudes are 
famous, with an average winter temperature 
of about 65 , and an air which, in summer, is 
always cool at night and in the shade. Fruits 
abound, especially the Mission grape, apri- 
cots, plums and pears. Mountains lie on 
every hand, and the scenery, while not strik- 
ing, is pleasant and not tiresome. It is a 
brisk place, and there is always the ancient 
and sleepy town across the river to visit by 
way of change; always the queer admixture 
of the old civilization with the new. 

Lastly, there is the comfort of a first-class 
hotel. The " Grand Central " is modern, new, 




LA SENORA DEL HACIENDA. 



50 TO MEXICO. 

and very complete. Expecting very little in 
that line, the tourist will find here the best 
hotel, excepting that at Las Vegas Hot 
Springs, west of Kansas City. 

As to the old town across the river, reached 
by street cars, the visitor who stops over will 
be impelled to go there. It is nothing to 
what comes after in Mexico, but is at least a 
first striking specimen of Mexican primitive- 
ness. It has always been a neglected fron- 
tier, a crossing-place for the ox teams of the 
ancient traffic, and a great place for the prose- 
cution of the legitimate Mexican industry of 
smuggling. Its cathedral is the only adobe 
one I know of in all Mexico; was undoubt- 
edly skipped in the age of church building, 
and is only interesting from its association 
with the faith of primitive worshippers for 
about two hundred years. 

Here, of course, the tourist must " pass " 
the custom house, — fit beginning for the en- 
ticing pilgrimage which lies still to the south- 
ward; unnecessary adjunct to the jealous por- 



THROUGH MEXICO. 5 1 

tals of every nation. But no passports are 
necessary; nobody asks you for any docu- 
mentary evidence that you are not a bandit, 
and there seem to be no annoying restric- 
tions as to personal baggage. 

Except where, by a series of remarkable en- 
gineering gymnastics, it climbs the mountains 
at Zacatecas, and the notched rim of the Val- 
ley of Mexico, the Mexican Central road 
seems, strangely enough in so mountainous a 
country, to traverse a vast plateau. The sen- 
sation in this respect, from Paso del Norte to 
Chihuahua, about two hundred and twenty- 
five miles, is peculiar. Cones, peaks, castles, 
ridges, lie on every hand. The train heads 
straight for some huge bulk, and always qui- 
etly slips by, uninterrupted for the most part, 
by cut, fill, or steep grade. Almost the whole 
distance, studded with such knobs and pro- 
jections as have been mentioned, and some- 
times diversified by glassy-looking lakes, is 
covered by a heavy growth of gramma grass, 
and is a pastoral country on an enormous 



52 TO MEXICO. 

scale. Many thousands of cattle are passed, 
grazing near the track; the telegraph poles 
are rubbed until they are sometimes smooth 
and oily, and trails run in all directions. The 
country really does change its character at 
the Rio Grande. The peculiar plateau forma- 
tion is not characteristic of the northern side. 
Yet, in this first stage of a journey in which 
the traveller is to be so forcibly reminded that 
he has left the United States, there is no no- 
ticeable difference in personal surroundings. 
Every moment the star-spangled banner is 
growing more dim and distant in the North. 
You are under the red, green and white of a 
country that it is an unfortunate part of your 
education to believe antiquated, uncertain and 
capricious. But cars, passengers, conductor, 
rails, locomotive, are all American. They 
have "come across," to use the current ex- 
pression, and do not seem particularly to 
regret it. Perhaps, however, if you go into a 
forward car, you may find some of your fellow 
Americans, with brown faces and excessive 



THROUGH MEXICO. $3 

hats, and wrapped in crimson-barred serapes 
until their faces are scarcely visible. 

Nor will there as yet be any necessity of 
resorting to tortillas and chile con came. At 
noon there is a dining station very much like 
those you have always been accustomed to, 
and a very good dinner is served in the Amer- 
ican style. 

Chihuahua may be regarded as the first 
Mexican city. It contains some 18,000 inhab- 
itants, and is a permanent departure from the 
adobe style of architecture, which has always 
been regarded by us as the inevitable and un- 
avoidable building material of the Mexican. 
When you come back, and intelligent people 
ask you if the city of Mexico is built of adobe, 
you will privately smile, and wonder how it 
was that you yourself once had the same 
notion. 

Chihuahua, for various reasons, deserves a 
brief visit. It is, in the matter of public spirit 
and enterprise, a good deal Americanized, 
and all the ideas of the place are advanced to 



54 TO MEXICO. 

a notable degree. There is a handsome plaza, 
an aqueduct of some two-hundred-and-twenty 
years' standing, many mines of paying rich- 
ness, a cathedral whose elaborately carved 
front has been much admired, and a vast vari- 
ety of Mexican scenes and ways, very sugges- 
tive of what is yet to come. 

The place was once captured by the Ameri- 
cans, and held as long as suited their conven- 
ience. If it be daylight, the traveller may see 
just north of the city, and close to the track, a 
shelf of ground above the plain where the 
three brown mounds still stand which were 
the Mexican earthworks at the battle of Sac- 
ramento. This, in the light of later days, was 
not much of a skirmish, but it is very well that 
it was no more than that. 

The place was also captured by the French, 
which is the same thing as saying that it was 
made to come under the rule of Maximilian. 
There is a bell in the tower of the cathedral 
which, during some one of these military vicis- 
situdes, was pierced by a ball. It still rings, 



THROUGH MEXICO. 55 

and is not considered as having its usefulness 
greatly impaired. The tourist, after hearing 
all the bells, and before finally emerging from 
Mexico, may question within himself whether 
it has not been really improved by the acci- 
dent. 

After Chihuahua the line of the road lies for 
some two hundred and fifty miles through a 
region that is, in a sense, a desert. Rugged 
mountains fence in stretches of cactus-grown 
plain. Long vistas of level lands stretch away 
among the peaks and ridges almost as far as 
the vision extends. Occasionally, appearing 
in a most unexpected manner, are districts of 
cultivated fields, green in midwinter with 
growing grain, and having in view at any sea- 
son all the antiquated and curious processes 
of Mexican agriculture. Pastoral country on 
an enormous scale is not wanting, and the 
seeming desert is grazed by innumerable 
goats. You wonder what they do with so 
many, the goat being very far from your idea 
of the representative of abounding wealth, in 



56 TO MEXICO. 

his best estate. Well, they are killed by the 
thousand for their hides. The hides are 
dressed in a manner that makes them look 
like fine brown cloth, and used in the making 
of the Mexican breeches. 

Occasionally rivers are crossed, of which the 
Nazas is a fair example. Where such is the 
case, it does not take much of a district to 
hold and support ten thousand people. As 
has been stated, the country has few rivers, 
and all are drained almost dry by huge acequi- 
as. Surrounded by chains and ridges, the 
valleys of Mexico lie like green gems in a set- 
ting of bronze. Their products exceed per 
acre anything known of fruitfulness in the 
North, and the population they support is 
enormous. 

It begins to be perceived first in these re- 
gions, that corn, cotton, wheat, cane, barley, 
grow almost side by side. In most cases con- 
tinuous crops of a kind follow each other in 
rapid succession through all the year. A crop 
of barley is harvested and another is sown. 



THROUGH MEXICO. $J 

Cotton will never compete with that grown by 
us, because the plant is a perennial, and be- 
comes a tree, shortening its staple every year. 
It is cut down and the field replanted once in 
six or eight years. 

A hundred miles south of Chihuahua, is 
Santa Rosalia, famous among Mexicans for its 
sanitary hot springs. It is reported by the 
few foreigners who have yet visited it to be, 
as to the quality of its waters, probably the 
finest health resort in America. 

In these regions the population is almost 
entirely gathered in communities. There is a 
ridge, or sierra, or some vast agglomeration 
of sterility, and then, with the suddenness of 
turning a curve, appears a densely populated 
valley, which seems to have dropped from 
some other world. 

In this region, and in the course of a few 
hours, are passed the Florida Valley, the ranch 
region of Jimenez, the laguna country, Lerdo, 
and Jimulco. It is in a Mexican sense, a fine 
country; to the traveller a constantly recur- 



58 TO MEXICO. 

ring puzzle as to whether it is rich, poor, of 
merely indifferent. It is to be remembered 
that the process of irrigation solves all agri- 
cultural uncertainties. Ranches, far and near, 
sometimes attaining to the dignity of respecta- 
ble towns, sometimes only a cluster of hovels, 
are seen in mountain glimpses. Sometimes 
the country, as far as one can see, is ah ap- 
palling desolation, untenanted by even the 
ravens. Yet even here the faint lights which 
indicate human habitation are seen twinkling 
through the night, and in daytime groups of 
Mexicans rise like ghosts among the mezquite 
and cactus. Trains of donkeys, bearing curi- 
ous loads, plod patiently along white roads. 
Here and there around the horizon are seen 
the tall and slender columns of white dust, 
undulating and contorted, but never broken 
by the mysterious wind, that mark as an es- 
pecial feature every Mexican landscape. 

In these solitary fastnesses vegetation takes 
upon itself the most unusual and fantastic 
forms. There is nothing that is not thorny. 



THROUGH MEXICO. 59 

The little pear cactus, so often seen in gar- 
dens and pots with us, becomes here a tree 
that is the desert Caliban of vegetation, with 
a trunk and branches as large as those of an 
oak, and with huge green lobes, two feet or 
more in diameter, for leaves. It is as thorny 
as ever, and more so, but bears a blood-red 
fruit which, once plucked and peeled by the 
horny and accustomed hands of the Mexican, 
is called " tuna," and is good. 

The bunch of slender green lances which 
everyone remembers who has ever been to 
New Mexico, called by us " Spanish bayonet," 
and which is the " soap weed," or its near rel- 
ative, is here a tree sometimes forty feet 
high, on whose huge and scaly branches the 
" lances " stand in grotesque tufts for leaves. 
It becomes, indeed, a member of the exten- 
sive family of palms, — a kind of poor rela- 
tion. 

Mezquite, known all over the Far West as 
a plant whose gnarled and crooked roots are 
used as fuel, is here, upon tens of thousands 



60 TO MEXICO. 

of acres, a not unhandsome tree, the groves 
of which remind one of an abandoned or- 
chard of immense extent. There is, where 
these grow, a thick sod of grass, green or 
brown according to the season, no under- 
growth, and a gently undulating landscape. 
It will never, in all probability, be the fate of 
the reader to encamp in these solitudes. If he 
should, he would be surprised to hear the 
songs of innumerable mocking birds in the 
early morning, in the leafy covert of the mez- 
quite desert. Jackass rabbits, out of gun 
shot, quizzically regard you, and the tufted 
heads of the mountain quail glide from cover 
to cover like small spectres. Sometimes, but 
rarely, the antlers of a black-tailed buck ap- 
pear above a clump, or his tawny hide goes 
like a flash past an opening. 

In any village in these regions one is aston- 
ished to find piles of yellow oranges, ban- 
anas, limes, and fruits one does not even 
know the names of. In no case may it be 
predicted what a range of rugged hills may 



THROUGH MEXICO. 6 1 

hide, or what green valley lies unseen in the 
heart of apparent desolation. 

Tanks, excavated by hand to catch the 
rains and hold water during the dry season, 
are common. One of the resources of the 
country is shown in immense herds of " hur- 
ras," with colts, sometimes numbering many 
hundreds. 

Often, where the silence of the wilderness 
seems to close around impenetrably, the 
shapely tower of the universal church may 
be seen above the hills, and a visit thither 
would disclose a town, its rule of life the tra- 
ditions of two centuries, and all its hopes 
bounded by the church door and the gate of 
the little cam-po santo which ends all. Through 
such scenes, destined to be entirely unnoticed 
and unknown by the railway traveller, now 
pass the rattling trains waking the primitive 
silences with a shriek, — a flash of the present 
century across primeval dreams and shadows. 

It is rather a queer sensation to look from 
the railroad station down into Zacatecas, It 






62 TO MEXICO. 

is about half way from El Paso del Norte to 
the City of Mexico, a mining town of about 
80,000 inhabitants, compact, closely built, the 
houses seemingly an immense number of red, 
green, blue, and yellow bricks set on edge. 
For it is necessary always to look down into 
it, and to see it requires not only elevation 
necessarily, but distance. It is wedged so 
closely into its narrow valley that it has 
foamed over the edges, and crept up the hill- 
sides in little terraced clusters of adobe. It 
swarms with people of the true and ancient 
Mexican type, sombreros, serapes, sandals, 
buttons and all. All around it lie piles of 
slag, openings into hills, square inclosures, 
tall chimneys, indicating the ancient and 
present industry of the place, which is silver- 
mining. On Sundays, should the visitor hap- 
pen there on that day, he will find the streets 
almost impassable because of the crowds, 
and every corner of the place turned into a 
market. Every man is busy chaffering with 
fiis neighbor, and all the world is in good 



THROUGH MEXICO. 63 

humor. The list of articles bought, sold, 
peddled, supposed to be wanted, considered 
too high, bought at two prices, swapped for 
something else, would make up a list not 
found classified in any custom house of the 
known world. There are no wheeled vehicles 
to be seen. What is not carried on the na- 
tive's back is relegated to his brother carrier, 
the donkey. Altogether it constitutes a scene 
not to be found elsewhere in any land. 

The contortions of the railway line in reach- 
ing Zacatecas add something to the interest 
of the visit. "Mule shoes," as bends of that 
form are called in the West, are not only 
common, but in one or two instances double. 
The oddity of the Mexican scenes below, 
which are but hinted at here, combined with 
a railway mountain climb which has few 
equals, makes Zacatecas a point of interest, 
even if the tourist should spend but a day in 
its curious environs. 

The best hotel is called the " Zacatecano," 
^nd the visitor is inevitably the occupant of 



64 TO MEXICO. 

the cell of some departed nun, as the fine 
building was once a convent, the beautiful 
chapel of which is now used by the native 
Presbyterians as a house of worship. 

All Mexico is street-car crazy, but the most 
remarkable branch of the "tram-via" system 
undoubtedly will be found in operation here. 
Its grade up to the railroad station is some- 
thing near eight per cent, and on the opposite 
side of the town about six per cent. Through 
these narrow and crowded streets six good- 
sized mules to the car are made to go at a 
keen gallop. There are two drivers, a brake- 
man, and two conductors, besides, I think, a 
man whose extra-official functions are some- 
how connected with the management of a 
long whip. Once at the top of the hill, the 
mules are taken off and the car is turned loose 
laden with passengers, running down the steep 
incline at something like twenty miles an 
hour. 

From the crest of the hill, on the opposite 
side of the town from the railroad, is the fin- 



THROUGH MEXICO. 65 

est view possible of the wide and characteris- 
tic Mexican landscape, a view which, once 
impressed upon the mind, is not likely ever 
to be forgotten. 

Aguas Calientes comes some four hours 
below Zacatecas, and is reputed justly one of 
the attractive places of Mexico. There are in 
all likelihood about forty thousand people 
here. The streets are wide, the plazas hand- 
some, the architecture good, and the climate 
not so cool as places near by of higher eleva- 
tion. 

The principal attraction is the aguas calien- 
tes, from which it takes its name. The oldest 
and best of the baths are reached by street 
cars through the Alameda, a shaded walk. 
The springs have a temperature of 106 , and 
rise strongly through the black sand in the 
bottom of the old-fashioned square stone 
baths. The arrangements are primitive, but 
clean and comfortable. 

There is a newer and more pretentious 
bathing establishment in the town called, by 
<5 



66 TO MEXICO. 

way of distinction from the first, the Banos 
Chicos. The buildings are quite pretentious, 
but the bathing arrangements are bad, and 
the water in its course through the pipes be- 
comes too cold. 

The cathedral, on the plaza, contains the 
most sonorous bell in the republic. Consid- 
ering the almost studied dissonance of the 
bells of Mexico, the visitor will remember 
with no small degree of satisfaction La Cam- 
pana de San Pedro. 

The old and somewhat dilapidated church 
of Nuestro Senor de Los Encinos, on the out- 
skirts, contains fourteen pictures, life-size, 
painted by Lopez, about one hundred years 
ago. They are well worth a visit, though 
neither priest nor people seem to be aware of 
the fact. 

From Aguas Calientes downward, or up- 
ward actually, the valleys are wider and more 
numerous, and the arid tracts grow more in- 
frequent. Rushing streams of water, coming 
from some unknown head, frequently surprise 



THROUGH MEXICO. 67 

the eye. Many districts are of evidently 
enormous richness, and in midwinter are as 
green as June in the northern States. 

Some sixty miles below Aguas Calientes is 
the little town of Encarnacion. Here is the 
only iron truss bridge on the line of the Mex- 
ican Central road. It spans a chasm of great 
depth, through which runs the Encarnacion 
River, — the most diminutive streamlet ever 
called by the name of river. 

Silao is a place where the tourist begins to 
see something of the agricultural beauties of 
Mexico. The town sits placidly in the midst 
of a smiling valley, green always, and culti- 
vated like a northern garden. The neatness 
and resulting success of Mexican agricultnre 
are here exemplified. 

The amiable custom of the citizens of Silao 
is to come every day to the depot when the 
train passes, as they would go riding or visit- 
ing. There are many pretty women among 
them, if the fact is considered important by 
the average American visitor, and it is sin- 



68 TO MEXICO. 

cerely hoped that no arrangement of the time 
tables will cause the trains to pass in the 
night. 

Queretaro comes next as a place of inter- 
est, the last one directly upon the line north 
of the Capital. Leon and Guanajuato inter- 
vene, though not immediately accessible, or 
without some delay. Leon is probably the 
next largest city of the republic after the Cap- 
ital, and is wholly given up to manufactures, 
principally of leather. It is an exceedingly 
interesting place to visit, though it boasts of 
no picturesque features. Guanajuato is dis- 
tant some leagues from the main line, and is 
reached by branch from Silao, lacking some 
four miles. It is entirely a mining town, often 
stated to be the most important one in the 
country. It divides that distinction with Zac- 
atecas. 

Referring again to Queretaro, it will be 
found by the visitor to be in a peculiar sense 
worthy of an inspection. Bathed perpetually 
in an atmosphere almost tropical in midwin- 



THROUGH MEXICO. 69 

ter, plentifully supplied with all the products 
of perpetual summer, neither the railroad nor 
anything new seems to have the effect of mod- 
ifying the character for which it has always 
been famous. It is in Queretaro always about 
a.d., 1640, and four o'clock in the afternoon. 
The narrow streets may or may not lie at 
right angles with each other. They are nar- 
row, dense, and with so few windows that they 
come near seeming to be long streets of blank 
walls. It is the reputed conservative town of 
Mexico, and the tower of defence of the church 
party. The place has a lasting memento of 
this peculiar reputation in the little barren 
hill in the suburbs, where Maximilian, Mira- 
mon and Mejea were shot together. It is as 
lonely a spot as lies anywhere under the sun, 
this Cerro de las Campanas, and that particular 
spot on its brown slope which is marked by 
three little wooden crosses, saw the end of a 
brilliant scheme to strangle an established 
government and plant a European empire on 
transatlantic soil. I chanced to walk thither 



yo TO MEXICO. 

beside a donkey on which rode an old woman 
and a huge basket. She was garrulous of the 
event, and gave the details of the doings of 
that time with a vividness the histories do not 
attain to. 

From Queretaro there is a general up- 
ward tendency of the track until you attain 
the edge of the rim that bounds the famed 
Valley of Mexico. The scenery is by turns 
grim in its brown ruggedness, and smiling 
with perpetual roses. The valleys are full of 
orange, lemon and plantains. The line makes 
some surprising turns, and there is another 
"mule-shoe," or more than one. The one din- 
ing station that is yet to be passed is delight- 
ful of its kind, at San Juan del Rio, and the 
only one on any American line where the din- 
ner is served in courses, with thirty minutes 
to eat it in, and with an abundance of tropical 
fruits for dessert. 

Passing the crest which is the rim of the 
valley, the line is cut in the wall of the ancient 
canal which was digged to drain the waters of 



THROUGH MEXICO. *]\ 

the lake, in, or on the edge of which the city 
which is now Mexico stood. It is useless and 
dry now, but remains a curious relic of the 
time when there was a Venice in the heart of 
Mexico, and when the streets of the Capital 
were traversed in canoes. 




A PERPETUAL GRIND. 



CHAPTER V. 

THE CITY OF MEXICO. 

ON the authority of so distinguished a trav- 
eller as Bayard Taylor, the City of Mexico, 
with its surrounding valley, maybe pronounced 
to be one of the loveliest scenes of the civ- 
ilized world. The same places do not always 
produce the same impressions upon every in- 
dividual, but it is safely to be concluded that 
there is at least no similar scene. No ade- 
quate description of it has ever been written, 
and the reader is advised not to expect one 
here. Extensive reading on the subject fails 
to give any impression like that obtained by 
the first glance at the reality. The only even 
partial embodiment of it I know of, is con- 
densed into two paintings in the gallery of 
the School of Arts, at the Capital, and they do 
not include any view of the city itself. 




< 

III 
o 

o 
l-J 



74 TO MEXICO. 

The City of Mexico, with a population vari- 
ously estimated at from 225,000 to 300,000, is 
situated upon ground that was once the bed 
of a lake. The lake was what is now the Val- 
ley of Mexico. It was never intended by 
nature to be other than a body of fresh water, 
and nature is constantly rebelling against the 
inadequate plans of making it what it is; the 
site of one of the most beautiful capitals of 
the modern world. The lowest part is still 
Lake Texcoco and her sisters. Some of the 
finest buildings bend downward in their cen- 
tres, owing to want of solidity in their founda- 
tions, and there is not the means of efficient 
sewerage. Lake Texcoco at low water is only 
some six feet lower than the city streets. 
Chapultepec, Tacubaya, Penon del Marques, 
Guadaloupe, are but rocky islands whose tops 
once protruded from the shallow waters. 

The city is small in area, stands on per- 
fectly level ground, and from any of the emi- 
nences named above, presents the remarkable 
view which has elicited the encomiums of 



THE CITY OF MEXICO. 75 

every traveller. The same effect is produced 
by a view from the roof of the College of 
Mines, of that of the National Library, and is 
supplemented by the seemingly near and snow 
capped peak of Popocatapetl, and the glassy 
waters of the lake. 

The streets are some sixty feet wide, with 
wide sidewalks, and the city lies closely built 
in regular squares. The buildings are mostly 
of two, though sometimes of three or four 
stories. The square in front of the Cathedral, 
called the Zocalo, is the place of universal 
resort, though there are two or three others, 
handsome and clean, but not so well kept nor 
so expensively ornamented. 

It is the city of churches, as Mexico is un- 
questionably the land of churches. Their 
towers, always handsome, assist very much in 
making up the general view. It was also once 
the city of nunneries and monasteries, all of 
which are now suppressed, and the buildings 
used for schools and other purposes, all sec- 
ular. 



76 TO MEXICO. 

\ 

The following memoranda of places of 
interest in the city itself are offered more as 
hints or suggestions to entire strangers, than 
as a complete list of all places worth a visit. 
One might spend an entire week in the 
streets, and feel at no loss for entertainment. 
When time does not press, it is decidedly 
better to be in no great haste. It must be 
understood that even where scenes are not al- 
ways picturesque, or even agreeable, they are 
quite strange, and new to all American con- 
ceptions of life. There is an endless proces- 
sion of them, and coupled with the charms of 
sunshine, quiet, and rest, the visitor will find 
that from three days to three months may be 
profitably spent without any great anxiety 
about dates, history, or exact information. Of 
interesting public buildings, there are: 

The Cathedral. — A description of which 
is hardly necessary, as it is almost in the 
centre of the city, and open always. Against 
the western wall, and close to the ground, is 
built the celebrated Aztec Calendar Stone, 



THE CITY OF MEXICO. JJ 

figured in every book of travel. To say truth, 
it is not precisely known whether it was a cal- 
endar stone or intended for some other purpose. 
The greater wonder is that it was ever pre- 
served, as all the emblems and paraphernalia 
of heathendom and all the written and pic- 
tured records of the natives were destroyed in 
holy zeal during the first years of the Con- 
querors. It maybe of service to add that this 
Cathedral is conceded to be the largest eccle- 
siastical edifice in America. 

El Palacio del Poder Ejecutivo da la 
Nacion. — Which would be in English the 
national White House, or the Executive Man- 
sion; is the largest building in the city, 
occupying one entire side of the Plaza Mayor, 
or Zocalo. It is ancient, but not particularly 
prepossessing. It was not by any means con- 
structed for its present uses, for it belonged to 
the family of Cortez until 1562,' and was then 
purchased by the king of Spain for the use of 
his viceroys. Nevertheless it has, in one way 
or other, been the government building 



78 TO MEXICO. 

through all the vicissitudes of some three 
hundred and fifty years. 

Colegio Minerea. (College of Mines). — Is 
the most elaborate and expensive edifice 
ever constructed by the Mexican government, 
and one of the most sumptuous of educational 
buildings. Begun in 1784, it was not finished 
until 1813. It is quite completely equipped, 
has extensive and interesting mineral cabinets, 
and is well worthy a visit. 

El Museo Nacional. (The National 
Museum). — Was established in 1822, and is de- 
voted to Natural History, Archaeology, and the 
Ancient History of Mexico. The collections, 
antiquities, and cabinets of natural history, 
are large and curious. Aztec remains, and 
large photographs of the ruins of palaces or 
other public buildings existing to this day at 
Uxmal, Mitla and Chitzen Itza, would seem to 
indicate that the Aztec tribes at the time of 
the conquest were almost or quite as advanced 
in civilization as the Conquerors themselves, 
and yet practised to an extent desperate and 



THE CITY OF MEXICO. 79 

exterminating, all the rites of human sacri- 
fice. 

For in the court yard lies the huge stone 
that could have been intended for no other 
purpose. It is a block of volcanic rock shaped 
like an enormous mill-stone, and about nine 
feet in diameter by some four feet thick. It 
is as elaborately carved as though done by the 
best modern tools. There is in the centre 
of the upper surface a basin to catch the 
blood, and a deep gutter to carry it off. Much 
use must have been given it, as one side is 
worn perceptibly smoother than the other. 

But among all the gods, tools, instruments, 
and other grotesque things that lie in the 
court-yard, the best piece of carving is only a 
domestic utensil, apparently meant to be used 
for the unromantic purpose of boiling meat. 
It is a kettle holding some twenty gallons, 
shaped precisely like our modern cast-iron 
ones, with ears for pot-hooks on each side, and 
a lug for convenience in tilting it on one of 
the opposite sides. The whole is cut in stone 



80 TO MEXICO. 

as hard as iron, and the thickness of the 
vessel is not more than twice or thrice as 
great as that of cast metal. It required years 
of work to make that one kettle. It is a curi- 
ous illustration of the cheapness of toil and 
time among the Aztecs. 

El Conservatorio de Musica. (The Con- 
servatory of Music). — It occupies the build- 
ing of an ex-Jesuit university, which was 
begun as long ago as 155 1. It is an institu- 
tion for governmental instruction in music 
of a high order, and a very great credit to 
the country. 

La Academia de San Carlos. (The Acad- 
emy of San Carlos). — This is dedicated to 
instruction in the fine arts, and is also an 
extensive and interesting gallery of paint- 
ings. There is nothing in Mexico that will 
better repay several visits. What is called 
the ancient school of Mexico (of art), fills the 
visitor with surprise; surprise that a country 
so crude, isolated and generally atrasado in 
all the advances of modern times, should 



THE CITY OF MEXICO. 8l 

have produced such pictures, and more than 
a hundred and fifty years ago. There is also 
the escuela ?noderna, very fine, but with the 
exception of a few that are exceedingly good, 
seeming to the visitor to have somewhat the 
modern French tone. 

It ought not to be omitted, while briefly 
upon the subject of art museums, to state 
that these galleries also contain an original 
each of Murillo, Leonardo da Vinci, Ingres, 
Carreno, Ribera, and Teniers the elder; also 
supposed and probable Vandycks and Rem- 
brandts. 

La Biblioteca Nacional. (The National 
Library). — This is established in what was 
the church of San Augustin, a fine building, 
and perfectly suited to the uses of a great 
library. 

The feature which especially strikes the 
visitor is the great number of parchment- 
bound volumes, some of them in manuscript. 
The dates of a few, casually taken up, were 
I ^39> 1 57°> I 7°^> J 562. Many, if not all these 
6 



82 TO MEXICO. 

books were once private property, and some 
of them are curiously branded with a hot 
iron upon their ends, and with a variety of 
devices, the same in system, though not in 
extent, as the branding of cattle in Texas. 

El Aqueducto. (The Aqueduct). — This 
has been, almost time immemorial, the water 
supply of the city. The system is the same 
all over Mexico, and a memento of the times 
when pipes had not been made, and people 
did better without them than they seem to do 
with them. Through its whole extent the 
arches are low, because the source also is, 
and as there is no pressure, the ancient and 
honorable guild of the water-carriers takes 
upon itself the hydraulic function. But each 
house of any pretensions to modern ideas 
has a force-pump in the area, by means of 
which to get a supply up stairs. 

Throughout its whole extent, there seem 
to be no evidences of alterations or repairs, 
or that they have ever been needed. The 
ancient end of it is located in a most unpre- 



THE CITY OF MEXICO. 83 

possessing part of the city, and the stones of 
the basin are worn smooth and thin with the 
touch of human hands. The last arch seems 
to have ended in the street, and to have been 
left so, — 1677. But a hundred and two years 
afterward it was concluded to end the work 
in a fitting manner, and they added an orna- 
mental piece, — 1779. Time was not then of 
much value in Mexico, and by the current 
opinion, is not yet. If we had built the same 
aqueduct, such a thing would never have oc- 
curred; it would not have stood long enough. 




OLD CHOLULA. 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE VALLEY OF MEXICO. 

THE list immediately following is intended 
to comprise points that may be reached 
by short and pleasant excursions by street car 
or railway, usually in one day from and back 
to the city. 

The system of street cars in the Capital is 
very extensive and complete, and reaches all 
suburban points such as Tacuba, Chapultepec 
Guadaloupe, etc. Other places, as Ameca- 
meca, at the foot of Popocatapetl, require a 
night's absence. 

To strangers intending to make excursions 
to these places, and unable to speak the Span- 
ish language, it is suggested that it would be 
advisable to be accompanied by an interpreter 
to show the places of interest that might be 
missed, and make bargains with hackmen, 

boatmen, etc. 

8 4 



THE VALLEY OF MEXICO. 85 

As a passing remark, it may be observed 
that the street hack system of the city is under 
certain regulations that might be advanta- 
geously copied elsewhere. Each vehicle car- 
ries a small flag, either blue, red, or white. 
The color designates the quality of the hack, 
and its price per hour. When it is engaged 
the flag is taken down. You may tell at some 
distance, and without inquiry, quality, price, 
and whether it is already hired. 

The mere mention of places gives the visitor 
very little idea of the interest attaching to 
some of these suburban visits. The glimpses 
of the true inwardness of Mexican life afforded 
by them are far more valuable and pleasant to 
think of afterward, than are the show places 
regularly kept in stock. in most countries, and 
are by no means to be missed in a land so 
original and quaint as Mexico. 

Chapultepec. — It is reached by street cars, 
but it is best for the first time to go by way of 
the Paseo\ a drive which in the course of a 
few years will be one of the finest on the con- 



86 TO MEXICO. 

tinent, filled with groups of colossal statuary, 
some of which are already in place, and lined 
with trees. The hill and woods of Chapulte- 
pec, quite indescribable in words, add to the 
interest which naturally attaches to it as a 
point of historical interest to all Americans. 
It was captured by assault September 27, 1847, 
and was an ugly hill to climb under fire, rocky 
and steep, and then as now, overgrown with 
thorns and brambles. It was originally a 
country residence, is now the national military 
school, and is under extensive alteration and 
repair, as destined to be the Executive man- 
sion of the Mexican Presidents. 

All around it was once a swamp, which the 
cypress trees took advantage of to grow to a 
phenomenal size. Some of them, double or 
treble, are about forty feet in circumference. 
Nearly all of the extensive forest of them are 
adorned with fantastic hangings of gray moss. 

The monument to Juarez in the pantheon 
shows a genius for sculpture in the Mexicans. 
Another tasteful evidence of an appreciation 



THE VALLEY OF MEXICO. 87 

of the fitness of things, is the beautiful monu- 
ment at Chapultepec to the defenders of the 
place who fell in the assault mentioned. It is 
very simple, very unpretentious, and the plot 
of ground around it is exquisitely kept with 
banks of flowers and shorn grass. 

Just beyond, and within sight through the 
trees, is Molino del Rey. The building is still 
there, but the place shows no marks of the 
fierce little skirmish that took place there im- 
mediately before the storming of Chapultepec. 

Beyond Chapultepec, and reached by the 
same line of horse cars, is Tacubaya. This is 
a favorite place of suburban residence, and if 
visited during certain seasons of the year, will 
be found to be entirely given over to gambling 
and other orgies. At stated periods the au- 
thorities seem to think it best to turn the pop- 
ulation loose. 

A place opposite in character, and on the 
opposite side of the city, is the hill of Guada- 
ioupe, and the village of Guadaloupe Hidalgo 
where the famous treaty was signed. It is the 



88 TO MEXICO. 

home of Nuestra Senora de Guadaloupe, the 
" Mother of Mexico. " It is reached in half an 
hour by horse cars, and people do not go 
thither to gamble, but rather to pray. The 
hill top is the scene of the Virgin's appearing 
to the peasant. Everything here works mira- 
cles, though I suppose it is necessary to be- 
lieve it absolutely and beforehand, to have it 
so. A corner of the fine church below, for 
the largest edifice is below the hill, is given 
up as a depository of canes and crutches, 
votive offerings. There are several dozens of 
tawdry little paintings, representing every 
variety of accident by flood and field, each 
with its misspelled inscription detailing the 
miraculous cure worked by the direct and 
instant interposition of "Our Lady of Guada- 
loupe." 

It is, consequently, quite a health resort of 
the very faithful, and not least curious among 
the votive offerings is a tall stone tower on the 
hill, made to imitate a ship's mast and sails. 
There is also a curious garden or grotto, em- 



THE VALLEY OF MEXICO. 89 

bodying a local idea of beauty. The walls 
are entirely composed of broken crockery. 

Interesting crockery of native manufacture 
is also sold at Guadaloupe. 

Tacuba. — This is a village in the neighbor- 
hood, and a place of country residence for the 
more wealthy citizens of the capital. Near 
the hamlet of Popotla, on the way thither, 
stands the " tree of the Sorrowful Night " 
(El Arbol de la Noche Triste), beneath which 
Cortez sat during the whole of the night fol- 
lowing his defeat by the Aztecs. The legend 
seems to be historic, and the remarkable tree 
is almost worth a visit, even if the legend were 
wanting. Near Tacuba is the famous church 
of our Lady of Remedies, much visited. There 
are also some interesting Aztec ruins. 

Tacuba can also be reached by the trains 
of the Mexican National Railway, leaving 
city station both morning and afternoon. 

Convent of Desierto. — This is a ruined 
edifice lying among the mountain foot hills 
some miles west of the city. It is not reached 



go TO MEXICO. 

by the cars, but is a good place to go for a 
picnic, the party hiring carriages as far as the 
hill, then going up the hill either on foot or by 
means of donkeys. The place is pleasant and 
the view from the hill especially attractive. 

San Angel is a handsome and picturesque 
town popular as a country residence, and 
famous for flower and fruit gardens from 
which the city is largely supplied. There are 
pleasant walks in the neighborhood, and a fine 
view over the valley of Mexico. The factory vil- 
lage of Tizapan lies close by, and is interesting 
to visitors who are from the manufacturing 
communities of the United States. There is at 
San Angel a good restaurant near the plaza. 
The place is reached by horse cars leaving the 
Plaza de Armas every half hour. 

Canal de la Viga. — This ancient water 
way is very well worth a voyage, as far as can 
be gone in half a day, at least. It passes 
through, or by, what were once the floating 
gardens of Aztec times, and are yet almost 
that. The means of the journey is either a 



THE VALLEY OE MEXICO. 91 

scow or a canoe, preferably the former, upon 
the bottom of which you sit or lie, while it is 
"poled " up stream slowly by one or two Mexi- 
cans, who run up and down the slant of the 
prow. There are several villages on the way, 
and the jaunt usually ends at Mexicalcingo. 
Here is a half-ruined monastery and church, 
in front of which grow a group of enormous 
olive trees. The charm of this little trip is 
not quite explainable in words, but charm 
there is, and the Viga is extensively patron- 
ized by all classes, though foreigners some- 
times come away without having heard of it. 
It is recommended to start as early as con- 
venient in the morning, to buy fruit in the 
market place which is on your way, then for 
three cents a basket to put it in, wait there 
until a car passes, and go to the quay, hire a boat 
for the round trip, and eat fruit for dinner. 

Pen^on del Marques. — This, from the city 
roofs, is a round mound rising from the valley 
some seven or eight miles away. There is an 
ancient convent there, in which there are hot 



Q2 TO MEXICO. 

springs and a good bath. There is a fine view 
of Lake Texcoco, and from the hill top also 
a dim but interesting glimpse of the city. 
There are various indirect ways of going 
there. The best is to take a horse car for 
San Lazaro in the Plaza de Armas and go to 
the crossing of the line upon the canal ; there 
hire a boat for the remainder of the journey. 
Or you can remain on the car to San Lazaro, 
and walk the remaining distance. 

RAILWAY EXCURSIONS. 

San Juan Teotihuacan. — There are here 
some prehistoric Toltec (not Aztec) pyramids^ 
and other interesting remains. As there is no 
restaurant at San Juan, it is best to take lunch 
or fruit, unless you prefer to go to the neigh- 
boring town of San Lucas for meals, where 
there is a restaurant, — also a relic shop that 
may repay a visit. The place is on the Vera 
Cruz line and there are two trains every morn- 
ing. 

Tula. — This town is reputed among the 



THE VALLEY OF MEXICO. 93 

very oldest; an ancient seat of Indian rule. 
Here is also the oldest Christian church in the 
republic. There are ruins, presumed to be 
Toltec and prehistoric. The climate is per- 
ceptibly warmer than in the city. A detailed 
examination of the great Spanish drainage 
cut is obtainable here. There are two or three 
restaurants. Tula is a station on the Mexican 
Central Road, accessible by daily trains both 
ways. 

Amecameca. — This is a quaint and pictur- 
esque place at the foot of Popocatapetl, and a 
favorite spot with tourists. There are many 
charming walks, and a hill called Sacro Monte, 
not far from the station, is covered with 
enormous cedars. There is a chapel at the 
summit and another upon the side of the hill. 
Popocatapetl and Ixtoccihuatl — the White 
Woman — overawe the place. There are res- 
taurants and every convenience, and owing to 
time occupied in going, it is necessary also to 
spend the night there and return on the fol- 
lowing day. 



94 TO MEXICO. 

It is reached by going to San Lazaro, and 
there taking a train on the Interoceanic Rail- 
way, Morelos division. Trains leave in the 
morning. 

Texcoco. — There are ancient ruins in this 
town also, some mounds, and the site and 
ruins of the palace of Nezahualcoytl.* A hHl 
some two miles distant holds the remains of 
still another palace. A mile distant are the 
beautiful gardens of Molino de Flores. There 
is a fine old church. The place was in very 
ancient times a rival of Mexico, and is sur- 
rounded and covered by the remains of ancient 
magnificence. 

It is reached by the Interoceanic Railway, 
Irolo division, taking street cars at the plaza 
for Peravillo. Trains leave in the morning. 

The necessarily imperfect sketch of an in- 
teresting country closes here, leaving many 
things undescribed which it is hoped the 
reader may sometime discover for himself. 
Descriptions have been carried no further 

* In these extraordinary names the author merely follows copy, 
and knows no more of their fluent pronunciation than the reader. 



THE VALLEY OF MEXICO. 95 

than was deemed necessary for the conven- 
ience of the intending traveller. There has 
been no attempt at tabular or statistical infor- 
mation. At best it is not uncommon for the 
travelling fraternity to differ from each other 
as to facts, to say nothing of impressions. 

It is believed that as a field for the tourist 
and health-seeker Mexico has no equal, and 
there has been no attempt in these pages to 
conceal that impression. The facilities for a 
pleasant and economical journey thither are 
not overstated, and all ancient stories of 
danger, suspicion and semi-barbarism must 
soon be exploded by the experience of hun- 
dreds. 

Not as a perfect specimen of the literary 
art, and not as a competitor with innumerable 
volumes published about Mexico almost 
weekly, but as a brief compendium of hints 
which it is hoped may be useful to the intend- 
ing tourist, this little volume is left with the 
reader. 



A BOOK OF UNIQUE AND PECULIAR INTEREST. 

— The Times. 



WEST OF THE MISSOURI 

SKETCHES AND STORIES OF FRONTIER LIFE 
IN THE OLD TIMES. 

By JAMES W. STEELE. 
121110, paper;- 313 pages. Price 50 cents. 

" These stories are fragrant with the breath of the mountain and 
the plain, with constant reminders of the saddle and the camp 
fire." — Courier, Cincinnati. 

" If Capt. Steele had written only the preface to these sketches, 
we might well thank him for that one gem of poetic prose; and to 
say that the book is worthy of it is but a hearty tribute to its 
merits." — Tribune, Chicago. 

11 They are the writings of a man of culture and refined taste. 
There is a polish in his work, even in the rough materials that 
army officers find in our far Southwest, among Indians and white 
frontiersmen, that reminds the reader of Irving's sketches." — Bul- 
letin, Philadelphia. 

" They are written with a care and a nice precision in the use of 
words quite rare in books of this character. * * * The author 
brings to our notice phases of character practically unknown to 
Eastern civilization, and withal so graphically portrayed as to give 
the impression of actual life. * * * The book is worthy of 
attentive reading." — The American, Philadelphia. 

Mailed, postpaid, on receipt of price, by 

RAND, McNALLY & CO., Publishers, 

323 Broadway, 148—154 Monroe Street, 

NEW YORK. CHICAGO, ILL. 



M 1< 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 




017 505 359 1 



